All the TIME covers from the past year featuring Obama, McCain and Palin.

(Note: Updated to include November 3 cover.)

One of my commenters asked me yesterday about the coverage of Obama vs. McCain on the cover of TIME Magazine. I found conflicting reports online, so I decided to compile the information myself. There have been fifteen issues of TIME Magazine in the last twelve months with pictures of the current presidential and vice-presidential candidates on the cover. Here is the numerical breakdown of total appearances. (Note: On some of the covers two candidates appear together.)

I don’t know that this means anything other than TIME appears to be more interested in Obama than in McCain, Palin or Biden. But I did notice a few interesting things going through the various covers. For example, the May issue with Obama and Clinton on the front is titled There Can Only Be One: was this before or after people started calling Obama “The One?”

It is also interesting to compare the most recent October issue (Does Temperament Matter?) with the March 10 issue (Does Experience Matter?). The March issue contains two cover articles defending Obama’s lack of experience, one from a historical vantage and the other from a scientific viewpoint. Both articles argue that experience is not necessary to be president and may even be harmful! Of course, this makes for very interesting reading seven months later now that much of the media has accused Sarah Palin of lacking the necessary experience to be Vice President.

Here are all the covers. You can click on the title to go to the online issue or click on the thumbnail for a larger picture. If you find anything interesting, be sure to share it in the comments.

9 Comments

THANK YOU. I get TIME magazine – a gift subscription from my father-in-law. I read it and WORLD magazine, and figure that I get a pretty balanced perspective between the two. I thought TIME was covering Obama shamelessly as their champion and now…I see it in your blog, that the covers support my thinking! Shame on TIME for being so unbalanced. They truly have been pushing one candidate over the other. If I didn’t read other sources, I never would have learned about McCain and Palin to the same degree TIME taught me about Obama. It is a magazine that can’t be a sole source of information.

I am deeply saddened by John McCain’s passing. As someone who was raised as a liberal Democrat in the California’s East Bay Area, I became disenchanted with that party as I witnessed first hand the ineffectiveness in their policies in the helping poor, disenfranchised people they claim to represent. I later moved to Arizona, and was impressed with John McCain’s willingness to work across the aisle, his commitment to good governance, and his embodiment of the values that underlie civil society.

When he ran for president, I contributed to his campaign to the fullest extent allowable for an individual. I remember being horrified when I googled my name, and the first thing that came up about me was the fact that I contributed to McCain’s campaign. At first I was afraid that I would be ostracized by my liberal family for contributing to Obama’s opponent. However, I knew it was the right thing for me to do, and I continued to support him in subsequent campaigns.

My question for this blog: Whatever happened to the Time magazine cover that came out during the 2008 campaign by Annie Leibovitz that portrayed John McCain with a very white face and blood dripping out of his eyes? To me, that was one of the ugliest examples of political hate speech in history. I wonder if Time magazine is proud of that moment.